History of Henry V

Archbishop of Canterbury. My lord, I'll tell you; that self bill is urged,
Which in the eleventh year of the last king's reign
Was like, and had indeed against us pass'd,
40But that the scambling and unquiet time
Did push it out of farther question.

Archbishop of Canterbury. It must be thought on. If it pass against us,
We lose the better half of our possession:
45For all the temporal lands which men devout
By testament have given to the church
Would they strip from us; being valued thus:
As much as would maintain, to the king's honour,
Full fifteen earls and fifteen hundred knights,
50Six thousand and two hundred good esquires;
And, to relief of lazars and weak age,
Of indigent faint souls past corporal toil.
A hundred almshouses right well supplied;
And to the coffers of the king beside,
55A thousand pounds by the year: thus runs the bill.

Archbishop of Canterbury. The courses of his youth promised it not.
The breath no sooner left his father's body,
But that his wildness, mortified in him,
Seem'd to die too; yea, at that very moment
65Consideration, like an angel, came
And whipp'd the offending Adam out of him,
Leaving his body as a paradise,
To envelop and contain celestial spirits.
Never was such a sudden scholar made;
70Never came reformation in a flood,
With such a heady currance, scouring faults
Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness
So soon did lose his seat and all at once
As in this king.
75

Archbishop of Canterbury. Hear him but reason in divinity,
And all-admiring with an inward wish
You would desire the king were made a prelate:
Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,
80You would say it hath been all in all his study:
List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
A fearful battle render'd you in music:
Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
85Familiar as his garter: that, when he speaks,
The air, a charter'd libertine, is still,
And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears,
To steal his sweet and honey'd sentences;
So that the art and practic part of life
90Must be the mistress to this theoric:
Which is a wonder how his grace should glean it,
Since his addiction was to courses vain,
His companies unletter'd, rude and shallow,
His hours fill'd up with riots, banquets, sports,
95And never noted in him any study,
Any retirement, any sequestration
From open haunts and popularity.

Bishop of Ely. The strawberry grows underneath the nettle
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
100Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality:
And so the prince obscured his contemplation
Under the veil of wildness; which, no doubt,
Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night,
Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.
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Archbishop of Canterbury. It must be so; for miracles are ceased;
And therefore we must needs admit the means
How things are perfected.

Bishop of Ely. But, my good lord,
How now for mitigation of this bill
110Urged by the commons? Doth his majesty
Incline to it, or no?

Archbishop of Canterbury. He seems indifferent,
Or rather swaying more upon our part
Than cherishing the exhibiters against us;
115For I have made an offer to his majesty,
Upon our spiritual convocation
And in regard of causes now in hand,
Which I have open'd to his grace at large,
As touching France, to give a greater sum
120Than ever at one time the clergy yet
Did to his predecessors part withal.

Archbishop of Canterbury. With good acceptance of his majesty;
Save that there was not time enough to hear,
125As I perceived his grace would fain have done,
The severals and unhidden passages
Of his true titles to some certain dukedoms
And generally to the crown and seat of France
Derived from Edward, his great-grandfather.
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